To make a point...

Ok, the last post was a little sweeping and absolutist. I'll step it down a little. It could be said that the United States is the nation that is farthest forward in time of all the nations of the world. While it is more readily spoken that the US is "the most technologically advanced, or that we are the wealthiest, or the most advanced politically these things, while individually true to one degree or another they are inadequate to accurately describe the position of the US with regard to world history and the evolution of the human race.
the analogy to time is better. It captures the "spiritual" essence of the nature of human advancement and the role of the US in this process until now. With the dawn of the technological age (that being the primary lead we have upon the rest of the world) the nations the the earth have begun to close the gap. One the reasons is that America is failing socially, culturally and morally. Greed has supplanted the work ethic that was at one time world famous. (Alexis de touquiville idolized it his book...) morality has been replaced by the shame filled adherence to the forms of moral superiority and the loud intolerance of others. (the other symptom of moral decline is the obsession with sex) Our identity, mission and purpose has been supplanted by personal arrogance and entitlement and collective hubris.
There is clearly something wrong, but what that is is far less clear. Maybe. The problem is spiritual. In the aftermath of WWII the United States was tasked with the responsibility of guarding democracy against the forces of tyranny. We possessed a clear moral imperative that defined us morally, politically and socially. It gave us both a national as well as individual identity. For forty years from 1947 to 1987 we where the bastion that protected the free world. Then, we won. And the decay was rapid indeed. While it is an over simplification to make the above statement without volumes of qualifiers and analysis I'm equally sure that the fall of the roman empire was just as detailed and ambiguous. The facts are in evidence and the decline is apparent. What is less obvious is why. And that is the reason for the over simplification, we are the wealthiest nation on earth. We are far and away the most powerful military power. So what is declining? And why?

The point

In my last post I exposed a deep core of my sense of history here at the dawn of the 21st century of the Common Era. Technology has, among other things "drawn back the curtain" for many whom in past lives would have been unaware. We are forced to confront ourselves. Perhaps you are not forced to confront yourself, that is a personal matter. But you are forced to see us, to see the human race. This is perhaps the most difficult form of self-realization. To begin to perceive what you are. This is even more profound as we realize that we are perceiving who we are. And in my vision I see the most fundamental revelation as being a complete lack of purpose. "Cogito Ergo Sum", "I think, therefore I am". But what am I? What are we? Why are we?
For millennia we have clung to the rock of religion, mythology and the occult to fill in the empty place deep within all of us where the answer to the above question is supposed to live. We have fought wars over which of our beliefs where the "right" one. We have sacrificed our lives, the lives of our children and whole civilizations in the quest to convince all of us that this or that answer was the "right" answer. The terrifyingly rapid spread of technology has, like the harsh dawn of a clear sun, begun to show all of us that we where wrong. All of us. All the struggle and sacrifice seem to have been for naught as we stand upon the empty plain of history naked in the light of reality. Each of us is desperate for meaning. Meaning for our own lives. Yet, we can not fill in the blank within ourselves unless we fill in the deeper hole within where the answer to the question, "why are WE here?" is found. I have spend my lifetime holding on to the quest for truth as the meaning that I cling to for the strength to continue. But I look forward and see a grey misted tomorrow, I see uncertainty.
I am certain of this, it is the lack of meaning that is eating us up. No one of us can continue without meaning. In the past the struggle to establish "Our" truth was the meaning that sustained us. The truth of democracy, God (one and sundry forms), science and the mystery itself. But now the light of our new found universal perception is dissolving all of our notions and making them small and foolish. For those of you that are offended by this image, take heart, the human beings capacity for self-delusion appears to be infinite. But be warned, the light of reality is 1 degree greater. Whether now, tomorrow or in 100 years we will all be force to see the truth, that we have no idea who or what we are. And more painfully, Why we are.
I truly believe that unless we find the answer to this question we can not continue. I have seen futures in which humanity simply fades away leaving no mark of itself, no catastrophe, no blazing moment, we simply stop. We no longer remember and we stop, we cast ourselves forward into indifference and dissipate in the mist of time. I have seen futures where we destroy ourselves with increasing self hatred and self loathing. Our souls are eaten by our person shame at our uselessness and we race backward, running from the empty future. There is a third vision. One that came to me only briefly at the beginning of my journey. One in which we become...But that was probably my own personal version of hope.
No amount of war, spasm or science can prove a lie to be true. Reality is inviolable and incontrovertible. No matter how true or correct some thought or idea or other may be upon its own merits it can only form a part of the greater whole. And without context is a small piece of a vast jigsaw puzzle, the only one we have and with no place to go. Yes Buddhism, Occult, Christianity or Darwinianism may be your personal answer but only to your personal question. It leaves the deeper question unanswered and therefore, is without merit. For the deeper question is the deepest emptiness within you. No matter what noise you fill yourself with, there is a hollow echo at the bottom of your self that is the, as yet unanswered question, "Why are we?". And though you may go to your grave certain of "Your" answer I know in my heart that the last thing you will see is the unanswered question in the eyes of those you leave behind.
No, we can not continue unless we know the truth. Much has been made of gerontology of late and the question of eternal life is on the agenda. I have an Idea. I believe that the key to eternal life is having a reason to exist, a reason to be. Not just your own personal reason, your children or Your work, but a larger reason. I once spent time in a McDonald's restaurant asking people if they would take a pill that would grant them immortality, no one said yes. Do you really thing that we are here to turn stone into cars? Or to produce ever more plastic trinkets? While the medical profession is certainly noble, it doesn't count as it is only the correction of that which shouldn't be wrong in the first place and the maintenance of life without purpose, save to find that purpose. Our purpose.
Perhaps in addition to tearing away from our eyes the scales that have blinded us technology will also give us the sight to see the answer. But I doubt it. That answer lies in the depth of the human soul and no machine can ever resolve that image.

Point=pointless

Forgive the misspellings in the last post, the spell-checker was a bit off. We are connected to everybody on the planet and have nothing to say. We have infinite capability and nothing to do. There is a crisis of meaninglessness. Tech nology seems to be sweeping us to cliff where we have no choise but to realize that there really is no point to not only consnsciouusness but existance itself.
We don't do anything.
We don't serve any purpose.
We have no point.
Now what?

The benefits of technology

In a review of history, the history of the latter half of the twenty century, we can see the vast benefits that technology has had on society, economy, and people. The previous statement is so loaded with sarcasms that eve I'm a little ashamed. There is an epidemic of obesity. An epidemic mind you, not my words but the amass. One third of our children have been approached by a pedophilia on the internet for the purposes of cybersex (that statement is confusing in the extreme). A similar number have had "virtual" sexual contact with either those of their own age group or others. Their is currently, a battle in the supreme court regarding child pornography in the matter of digitally enhanced adults that are made to appear as though they are younger. There is another battle regarding the ownership of words themselves, music and evev parts of music. Our health is failing in general with an epidemic of (AMA's words) diabetics and worse, psychological disorders. Well, at least we've experienced the greatest economic expansion in history, right? Well, sort of. While there is a vastly greater amount of value in the economic system most of it is "virtual" being stock capital, trillions of it. And the rest, well almost all of that is debt. Home ownership is at an all time high. Average equity is at an all time low. We are heating up the planet with the half a billion or so motorized vehicles that are running and stressing the land with the 6.5 billion hungry mouths. The volume of communication taking place has increased 1000 fold. The amount of knowledge being communicated has dropped to zero (I don't consider math to be knowledge as humans can be knowledgeable without it). No person in your life is more than a keystroke away, or a cell phone call. Yet you can go months without saying a thing because of "a lack of time" , truth is you have nothing to say, there's nothing to talk about in spite of the sheer mass of people and events taking place every day. See what I mean?

Hey have you called "tech support" lately? These are the most likely scenarios:

A) you get an Asian on the phone who, while he speaks impeccable English, can not even begin to comprehend what you are saying. He desperately struggles to clarify what you are complaining about (while making jokes about the superbly...) and after 30 minutes of suicide class agony cheerfully and politely explains that there is nothing that he can do for you as either

1) you caused the problem

2) the problem isn't covered

3) the problem was caused by someone else's software/hardware/service and you should call them (which starts the cycle all over again....uh red pill or blue?)

B) you are greeted by a telephone the telephone askes to you explain why you are calling, who you are and if you are authorized to call. "press 1 to continue in urdu...press 2 to continue in swahili...(15 minutes later...)...press 73 to continue in english..." afterwords there are more menu's "speak or say yes" or "press the letter Q on your phone", it goes on and on, your eye's begin to bleed, you start to cry and scream. then a tech gets on the phone (Finially!) and ...politely explains that there is nothing that he can do for you as either
1) you caused the problem
2) the problem isn't covered
3) the problem was caused by someone elses software/hardware/service and you should call them (which starts the cycle all over again....uh red pill ,blue pill or lead pill?)

C) it spite of the best efforts of the system to drive you to dispar and suicide you manage to survive it all (I have heard credible stories of this happening) and prove that the problem is real and thier responsability and: they tell you that they know about it and are working on it and would be happy to contact you when a fix is released, at which point you phone cuts off as you are on voip and the latest snotwads hit "fuck me whit you skull" prerelease that you 13 y/o daughter downloaded from limewire releases its viral payload and eats your computer (which hosts the voip app) and causes your ISP to blacklist your connection, for security reasons. which causes you to have to go to a neighbors house to ......

call tech support.

am I the only one that is getting the impression that this whole technology thing isn't working out they way we thought it would? please try to remember that the very first thing that the modern world wroght is the atom bomb and the cold war. are you getting it yet?